


Ride the Lightning

by Tieleen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Early in Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So I'm <em>smart</em>," says Dean's little brother, who learned his letters in New Mexico, by himself, out of a text about werewolves, because he wanted to help so bad. He spits it out like it's poison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride the Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> Written at the very beginning of the show, after the second or third episode.

They're sitting by the kitchen table, Dean on the books and laptop, Sammy scribbling something and poking at his calculator, and Dean is suddenly and entirely sick of life in small terrified towns in the seventeenth century.

"Sammy," he says, "Do me a favor, take over this for a while. I'm gonna go dig up Schumacher, maybe he's got something helpful." Shumacher usually doesn't -- way too in love with the lore -- but at least he's not hounded farmers and the preacher's wife disappearing after four of her kids. Dean really hopes they catch this bitch; he's read this journal before, he knows how the story ends. They didn't find the missing people in any shape a human being ever had any business being in. He's just looking for clues.

Sammy doesn't look up. "I need to finish math."

Sammy's seventeen. Dean is finding himself telling himself that a lot more than he used to when Sammy was sixteen, fifteen, twelve. Sammy's a good kid; he always has been. But he's a kid, still, and teenage seems to be finally catching up with him.

Teenage did pretty well by Dean, really. He was mostly just sarcastic and obnoxious, and since his nearest and dearest both agree he's been that way ever since, it's been long considered fact that that was less hormones and more his charming personality. Sammy, though, is becoming even quieter, as if he'd ever had so much noise he could afford to lose some of it in the first place, and he's drawing away from them as fast as Dean can track. This is just one thing among many, and it sucks.

"Hey," he says, swatting the back of Sammy's head in the manner guaranteed to irritate him most. "All homework and no research make Sammy a dead boy."

Sammy rolls his eyes at him, which is fine, but then he looks uncomfortable, which bodes things that aren't. "Look, about that. I don't think I'm coming with you this weekend."

Dean blinks at him. "Huh? Of course you're coming."

Sammy looks wildly uncomfortable. "I have this huge chemistry test on Monday --"

For fuck's sake. "Sammy, it's not like you need to study to ace _chemistry_."

Now he looks belligerent; that one Dean at least knows what to do with. Sammy will go with you a long way, but he hates to be pushed, which is too bad, because Dean was pretty much born to push people. "Yes, I _do_ , Dean. I haven't been acing anything all year. I've been barely getting by."

Dean shakes his head in amazement. "What are you talking about? You're on the honors program, you're doing those AP classes --"

"So I'm _smart_ ," says Dean's little brother, who learned his letters in New Mexico, by himself, out of a text about werewolves, because he wanted to help so bad. He spits it out like it's poison. "That's not enough, okay? Being smart and not doing anything other than that doesn't cut it. I _have_ to start putting time into this or I'll -- I don't know, okay?"

Dean knows he looks very, very stupid right now. Just a kid; it's not like Sammy's a worse kid than, hell, anybody Dean can think about. He's out there every time and he does his share and he gives a shit, but he's a kid, and kids his age like football and school and -- okay, the school part is just Sammy.

 _Dean_ never did, but that doesn't really mean anything.

That's not true, anyway. He did like the sports and the parties, even some of his classes, but he always knew they weren't the things that really mattered. He always thought Sammy did, too. But this is such a curveball, he has no idea what to do with it.

...And then he understands, because he's seen that woman and the earnest look on her face, seen her talking to Sammy by the school gate when Dean drove in to pick him up, seen Sammy look at her and actually listen and didn't realize that the faint sense of unease in his stomach was this: _he hasn't looked at you like that in a while now_.

He says, "It's that, that Miss Williams, right? I've had teachers like that too, man. They're good people. But they think the most important thing is, you know, going to college, working nine to five, and that's great, that means they've never found something in their bedroom that wasn't supposed to be there." Sammy isn't looking at him. He's looking at the table, just to the right of Dean's hand, and the look in his eyes is nothing like that listening one. "That means we never had to _save_ them, Sammy, but they don't know _shit_."

"Yeah," Sammy says, "Because we're the great all-knowing Winchesters." He stands up, collects his things, calculator and pencil and eraser carefully balanced on top. "Forget about it. I'm gonna go do my homework."

He comes with them that weekend, of course, and Dean tries to remind himself that hormones go away.

~~

Nobody else in Dean's family loves the hunt like he does. Sammy used to be there every inch of the way, just like Dean, but it was always more about being like them, about being a grown up, about being together in it, about doing it well. Sam's always liked doing well.

And there was never the question of love with their dad -- it wasn't really about hatred, either, but it was about this thing that had to be done, about the straight line leading on and on and on; twenty two years and all the rage and revenge have been used up so many times Dean sometimes thinks all that's left is the boiled-out substance of determination, of the way we do things, of the next step to take. Until something happens that trips whatever little wires are strewn through his dad's mind, and Dean watches him empty ten bullets into a thing that needed maybe three for caution's sake, watches him spattered with blood hacking into gray skin, and thinks, okay, no. But there's no pleasure in any of it, the hunt, the mystery, the running, the being. There's no love.

Dean's been in this life since he'd been old enough to aim. They didn't start until Sammy was four, because there was nobody to trust to keep an eye on him that knew what was out there. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment, saved all that money from the fire and the life insurance that was supposed to last much longer than it ended up doing, and learned everything they could learn without going and seeing for themselves.

(Sammy wants to be a lawyer now. Dean's first brush with the law was that whole farce with social services when he was seven, with the deputy sheriff looking at him real nicely and saying, "Your dad's just not exactly right, okay, kid?" He didn't expect Dean to put his entire weight into elbowing him in the crotch, and Dean's always considered it possible that that's where his natural antipathy to the whole concept of law enforcement comes from.

Afterwards he didn't scream, because dad was nowhere around, but he did run as hard as he could and thought about what he'd just learned, just like he'd always been taught to. His elbow hadn't gone through and the deputy had definitely felt it, which canceled a whole bunch of possibilities, plus Dean pretty much knew him, which canceled a whole lot of others. The idea that the deputy was human and they wouldn't have to kill him didn't exactly make him feel better at the time, though. He doesn't feel guilty about that now, anyway. What kind of person wants to put a seven year old kid in lockup for the night?) 

Mostly what they learned was about the monsters, though. Hunters don't tend to get books written about them; if they know what they're doing, they tend to steer clear of the writers. But it's been years and years now of moving around, of chasing after things, and Dean's met some people, not a lot, but some. He met those who were like his dad and those who were just looking for something to do and those who were in it for whatever kind of reward and those who had the glint in their eye and the love. None of those last ones were people Dean ever wants to see when he's looking in a mirror.

This is why cops work in huge organizations, why they go out alone or together but always come back to a building full of people who make bad jokes and fight over coffee and insult each other. In any direction you'll look, you'll find one rule that's always been true: evil's contagious. It's true for the normal evil that belongs to living people, and it's true for the abnormal evil of dead ones. Too much love is just as bad as too much hatred. Taking too much joy in putting a bullet through something is shaky ground, even if that something has killed thirty seven people in four days. 

Most hunters are out there alone, completely apart from other people. They lie to everybody they know, they don't make bad jokes about things outsiders'll never get. It's just them and the bad things, and when they leave an opening, there's nobody to guard it from the bad climbing inside them. Dean's met them, he's talked to them and looked at them and moved on, and he'd looked at their grins when they were talking about their latest kill, and even those who were doing things that could only be described as good left something in him he doesn't like to look at.

When Sammy left, their dad was mad because he couldn't understand it. Because their dad is a good person, and he raised his kids to do this so important thing, to do right, and here Sammy was, choosing the wrong thing with eyes wide open. Dean sometimes wonders if dad told Sammy not to come back just because he was being his damned stubborn self -- a trait neither of his sons inherited, of course -- or because he was, in whatever way, letting him off the hook. But there's no question he was angry, and there's no question why. Their dad is a good man; he wanted them to be good men, too.

Dean understands all of that, and he feels the same wonder, the same helpless bewilderment in that kid he knew making those alien choices. He never saw it coming; he's supposed to be half a detective at least, he's supposed to be able to put things together and add in facts and see the apparition outlined in random data, but this was happening right beside him and he'd never dreamed it would go this far. But Dean is mostly a selfish man, and the reason he has always been most angry is that, so many years into doing this, if anything, he knows plenty of new reasons to be afraid of being alone in the dark.

~~

There are some things in life you have to be practical about, and Dean has always known how to do the math. They've saved dozens of people on-site, hundreds or thousands that would have died later. None of them make what happened to his mom be right. But he never wanted to be glad a girl was dead.

He knows it doesn't really work that way. That's not the opening, and his brother isn't too busy to guard him when the bad things come.


End file.
